Travel: Finding the balance between minding your carbon footprint and the desire to see new places

Plenty to discover here in Ireland: Tom Breathnach has watched the sunsets atop the forts of Inis Meáin, camped with his dog on stunning Heir Island, and gone puffin-watching on Wexford’s Saltee Island

Tom with Vipp

2020 as a travel writer could have spelled a spot of turbulence. But surprisingly, the year that saw the world grounded, travel columns cancelled and my passport serving about as much use as a wine coaster, was anything but my annus horribilis. Sure, the initial lockdown took a little jockeying, but travel writers are a pretty adaptable bunch: we're regularly parachuted into fresh scenarios, from new cultures to press-trips with all the dynamics of Love Island on tour. So for the first time in more than a decade, I was reacquainted with a lifestyle of no deadlines nor any pressure to pitch — plus that financial novelty, for many the freelancer, of that regular PUP boost. From rushing between assignments and airport terminals, there was almost a blissful, metronomic mundanity to waking up to a daily ritual of breakfast radio and bird-watching; Pat Kenny, Luke O’Neill and a resident nest of starlings became my unflinching sounds of spring.

Lockdown also provided me with a much overdue opportunity to just 'hang ten'. In the months prior to the pandemic, I’d travelled across the deserts of Iran, gone in search of a rare bullfinch in the Azores and driven coast to coast across the USA. Sometimes, there’s little time to digest all the travel adventures you experience in a work year, and lockdown allowed me to focus on all the memories left in the tank, rather than feeling any FOMO for those parked on the horizon. There were still opportunities to travel too, however, with overseas travel assignments still falling under the umbrella of essential travel during last summer’s restrictions easings. That became a little divisive in my field. And while some travel writing professionals opted to report overseas during the pandemic, I decided to down tools at home and focus on the staycation market. Sure, it may have been a zinger to miss out on some adventures from Beirut to California, but foreign travel remains very much a niche privilege, and it’s a lot easier not to feel duped by the universe when you remember that about 80% of the world will never get a boarding pass.